


Catch Me If

by phoebesmum



Category: Sports Night
Genre: Angst, Family, Family Rydell, Friendship, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-02
Updated: 2009-12-02
Packaged: 2017-10-04 02:36:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoebesmum/pseuds/phoebesmum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Isaac learns what Dan was born to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Catch Me If

**Author's Note:**

> Written June 2007, for Seashellpoet's LJ sportsnightglee request for Isaac-Dan background.

The first go round in the retirement game, Isaac honestly believed he meant it. He'd led a rich life, a full life, he'd done everything he'd ever set out to do, achieved more than he could have imagined possible. He'd pushed boundaries, broken barriers, widened borders; more than enough work for one man's lifetime. He'd earned a few decades of peace and quiet. There were books to be read, bad TV to be laughed at, a lawn to be mown and roses to be tended; there were early morning rounds of golf, long, lazy afternoons in the clubhouse, peaceful evenings at home with Esther. He'd take her out dancing, wine her and dine her, woo her all over again and spoil her as he'd never had the time to spoil her before. He was going to discover his children as people, find out who they really were; get better acquainted with this Douglas fellow who kept hanging round and getting under his feet, find out just exactly what he thought he was after.

Then the phone call came from Luther Sachs.

At first, Isaac seriously considered passing up his invitation. 'Retired' _meant_ 'retired', dammit; he was too old to start building from the ground up. Leave that to younger men, stronger men, men with their whole lives ahead of them. But … it was just a meeting, after all, it didn't commit him to anything. What could it hurt?

He said as much to Esther, and Esther looked at him over her glasses, half-musing, half-amused. "Just a meeting!" he said to her again, and Esther laughed softly and said, "Yes, dear." So when he came back from that meeting, visions dancing in his head of the greatest sports show in the world _ever_, _his_ show, run _his_ way, and he said to her, half-apologetically, "I'm thinking about it, Esther," maybe he should have been less surprised that she was not surprised at all.

*

He'd thought he was glad to give up commuting, the crush and the hurry and the bustle, but once he steps into the flow he finds himself swept up in it, re-energised. Suddenly he feels ten years younger: inspecting the new studios, hardhat and safety jacket reminding him of his days as a frontline reporter; wrangling with artists and agents the way he'd once tackled thick-headed editors and dim-witted fellow journalists. He knows what he wants: he knows _exactly_ what he wants. He even knows where to find it: a little show he'd caught late one night in the middle of nowhere, a motel room somewhere between Dallas and hell. There'd been two kids hosting it, both of them bright and witty and charming, and if the thing'd been produced on a shoestring – must've been, it was on a channel even _he'd_ never heard of – then you'd never have known from watching it. That's what Isaac wants. And that is exactly what he means to have.

He tracks it down. He finds out names. He makes demands. And when Bert Stors says, disdainfully, "Dana Whitaker? Yes, I've heard of her. She's supposed to be difficult," Isaac just smiles, all white teeth and grandfatherly benevolence. He knows how to be difficult too.

He meets the two boys – McCall, Rydell – for the first time on a dull, clammy winter's day, in a room whose air conditioning is set to 'sauna'. McCall – Casey – is pink-faced and perspiring in a severe dark suit in a cheap fabric that makes him look like an underpaid office clerk. Rydell's also wearing a suit, businesslike and formal for all that in his case it gives him the air of a schoolboy playing dress-up, but this one looks hand-made. His shoes, too. Isaac considers him thoughtfully. He knows their salaries; knows the cost of living. He doesn't see how the Rydell boy's maintaining the kind of lifestyle he appears to be, not if he's keeping things on the level. And, god knows, there are plenty of ways to make a little extra in the world of sports, especially if you aren't too particular about how you do it. If that's the case then, charm or no charm, Rydell's out of the picture.

He tucks the thought away to check out later on, and settles down to concentrate on the interview. Ten minutes in, and all suspicions have flown his mind. The boys are relaxed and funny, confident and endearing, but, better yet, competent and knowledgeable, talented, capable. He'd known as much, of course – he'd had a month's worth of tapes flown in and has watched every minute of anchor footage, noting their strengths and their weaknesses, their skills and their flaws, Casey's tendency to bombast, Dan's occasional verbal slip-ups and his ever-so-slight speech defect – but this meeting confirms it. These are _his_ boys. They're wasted on a two-bit channel like Lone Star. He's planning the best damn sports show that money can buy, and he needs people who can make that happen. People like these two – them, and the 'difficult' Dana; it hadn't taken five minutes for Isaac to recognise that 'difficult' simply meant 'dedicated', 'strong-minded' and 'good at her job'. Oh, yes, and 'female'. That was going to ruffle some feathers. Well – again: let it.

There are weeks of negotiation, and many more meetings. Contracts need to be wound up, schedules figured out, targets set. But suddenly it's June, and then July, and almost before he knows it Isaac finds himself standing in a control room that will come to feel like a second home to him, watching the two young faces over a bank of monitors and hearing, for the first time, the words, "I'm Casey McCall alongside Dan Rydell, and you're watching _Sports Night_ – so stick around!"

People did. Not many people, maybe, not by demographic standards, but enough. Enough to keep Luther Sachs happy, and all of them employed. Enough to pay for a champagne lifestyle, so long as the champagne isn't Cristal. Everyone settles down, settles in. Casey learns the hard way, courtesy of a clandestine gag reel, how to keep his face straight when he's on camera; Dan manages to control the embarrassing squeak that sometimes sneaks into his voice when any one of his favourites – he has a lot of favourites, he's a dyed-in-the-wool sports junkie – is doing well. And things are good.

Late September, Isaac's surprised one evening to see only Casey behind the desk, Mike, from the sub pool, at his right hand. He checks the roster: yes, as he thought, it's not Dan's night off for another five days; he must've taken a personal day. Dana confirms it in the break – she's cleared it, it's all above board: "That's okay with you, Isaac?" she says, and, behind the breezy confidence, he can hear hesitation, an uncertainty that she might have done something wrong. So he shakes his head and says no, no, it's fine, the boy's entitled, and he settles in to watch the show.

It's disappointing. It's _good_, sure; it's fine, in fact. It's just … not the show he expects to see. Without Dan there, it loses its sparkle. It's Dan's charisma, Isaac realises, the dedication that teeters on the brink of obsession, the occasional flashes of a genuine winning smile that slip through the professional mask: that's the magic ingredient. And the show misses those things badly.

Not that there's anything wrong with Casey's performance – not with Mike's, for that matter. The man's a professional, with his own deep-rooted love of sports giving his on-screen persona depth and conviction. But it still, only too obviously, _is_ a persona; there's always something reserved and distant about him.

(Later, when he's come to know them better, Isaac will realise that the difference is that while both of them would give you the shirt off their back if need be, only Casey would expect you to return it the next day, clean and pressed and neatly folded. But, then again, Casey would need it more. It's easy to be generous when all your life you've wanted for nothing, and Isaac has learned by now that bespoke tailoring and hand-made shoes are what Dan was born to.)

Isaac times his exit from the building to coincide with Casey's that night so that they ride down in the elevator together, and he takes advantage of the relative privacy to ask after Dan, if there's anything wrong. Casey takes a sudden all-consuming interest in the elevator buttons, but all he says is that it's Dan's brother's birthday. There's a pink tinge to the edge of his ears that makes Isaac press a little further.

"Oh?" he says, and he tilts his head, keeping Casey fixed in the headlights. "Dan's close to his brother?"

"His brother's dead," Casey blurts.

Isaac stays silent; it's often the best way to press for further information. And, sure enough, after a moment or two, Casey goes on, "Car crash. He was sixteen. Danny … took it hard." He clams up then, although a muscle jumping in his jaw tells Isaac there's more to the story. A lot more.

Isaac was raised in other times than these, harder times, worse. He remembers Selma. He remembers King. He's been spat on, sworn at, had doors slammed in his face; he's been called 'boy', and other things, uglier things. He finds himself short of patience for over-privileged white boys and their beefs with the world. But this – this he understands. Loss and grief and mourning; it's a universal language.

He watches Danny more closely from that day on. (_Danny_. That's how he finds himself thinking of him.) He notices things: he notices that Dan is always kind and careful, always thoughtful and considerate. If one of the staff's unhappy or has a problem, Dan's the first one to see it, and it's Dan who'll do his best to fix things for the better. It's a compulsion, almost, and Isaac wonders how much of a toll it takes on him, but what can he say? It isn't his place to shoulder burdens.

Until the day when he finds Dan standing by the reception desk, staring sightlessly down at a battered carton in his hands. He seems lost, out of time, isolated from the flurry of the office around him and, when Isaac touches his arm, he jolts. Even then, when he looks up, it takes him a moment, a moment of blinking and head-shaking before he seems to see Isaac properly, and then the smile that he dredges up is wan, a pale shadow of his normal expression.

He says, "Hey, Isaac," and hitches the carton up to rest more securely against his chest. "Sorry, I was – I was just thinking." He manages a grin that's almost convincing. "Never a good thing. Did you want me?"

"Not especially," Isaac tells him calmly, and nods at the box. "Broke up with a girlfriend?"

Dan blinks down, as if he'd only just realised there was anything in his arms. "No," he says, "No. It's just some stuff – some stuff I'd left at my grandmother's. My mom wanted me to have it, and my dad drove down here and dropped it off."

"I'm sorry to have missed him," Isaac says automatically, and Dan's face snaps shut like a steel trap.

"Yeah," he says quietly. "You and me, both." Then he recovers, tries to shrug it off, says, "See ya," and he heads back toward his office.

Isaac is not too proud to pry. He glances at Melissa, eyebrows raised. Melissa knows everything that happens in the office, day or night, and she's always happy to share. She's CSC's very own in-house jungle telegraph.

Melissa's mouth is a tight line, her fingers rattling viciously across her keyboard . She's as fond of Dan as any of them, and her eyes are angry. "His dad didn't stop," she says quietly. "Brought that stuff up, dumped it on my desk, told me to let Dan know, and he was out of here."

"Didn't stop to say hello?"

"Didn't even stop to look around," she says, and shakes her head. "I guess they're not close."

"Guess not," Isaac agrees, and he turns and follows Dan's retreating figure with his eyes.

_Oh_, he thinks. _Oh. Oh, Danny!_ And he remembers thinking _… wants for nothing_; realises that he was wrong. So, so very wrong.

Dan's there for everyone, any time, no matter what. But who, when the time comes around, who is there for Dan to turn to?

Like he said before: it's not Isaac's place. He's Dan's boss, not his family, not his friend.

Like he cares. He turns and follows Dan, catches him up a little way along the corridor, where Dan's stopped. The box has split, and its contents – books, mostly, it looks like, and Isaac sees an old, broken audio tape unspooling and fluttering through the gap - are threatening to spill over onto the floor. Dan's fighting to hold it together.

Isaac reaches out a hand. "Here," he says. "Let me help you with that." And Dan looks up at him, and he manages a smile.

***


End file.
